The Moz Blog

4 Graphics to Help Illustrate On-Page SEO

For many SEO professionals, on-page optimization is back to basics. But sadly, there seem to be a lot of us who still make some very basic mistakes. In this post, I'll try to add on to my previous writing on perfecting on-page optimization by sharing some visuals that can hopefully help to hammer key points of the practice home.

#1: The Value of Optimization and the Danger of Overdoing It

I generally abide by the 80/20 rule when it comes to keyword use. 80% of the value to be had comes from 20% of the effort. Nail the title, the headline and make sure the phrase is on the page (and the page is actually on the subject of the keyword) and you've done your job. The additional impact on rankings to be gained from perfectly calculating the number of repetitions or ensuring every paragraph fits into the "theme" of the keyword and document is likely to be a waste of time better spent on other priorities. That's what this graph tries to illustrate:

Nothing in the on-page world is going to provide exceptional ranking influence, but getting perfect is often only marginally better than just nailing the title and headline. If you're spending a ton of bandwidth on the last 80% of work (providing 20% of value), I might re-consider your to-do list.

#2: On-Page SEO is More than Keywords

When I first got into SEO in the early 2000's, the search engines seemed to have a fairly naive algorithm for content analysis, which led to SEOs adopting equally naive tactics for on-page optimization. Years later, these tendencies, sadly, still persist.

Yes, it's essential to effectively target your keywords in your page titles, headlines (or early in the body copy), URLs, etc. But content analysis has become far more sophisticated with engines "reading" pages almost the way humans do and pattern-matching good content, design, layout and usability. There may even be some elements of on-page analysis that look at the authenticity and passion of the written word (or something that approximates it).

In the graphics below, I've tried to illustrate this:

I'm not suggesting one shouldn't optimize for keywords or that using terms and phrases that stay relevant and on-topic won't help. I'm merely noting that optimizing for the experience real, human users have and the value they derive from your work can produce outsized returns to simple, classic on-page optimization.

#3: How Search Engines Can Measure a Page's Value

This one's less of an illustration and more of a text-based diagram. I wanted to help explain all the signals Google can measure from their many sources of information, and how this can potentially affect SEO:

Google's tremendous reach across the Internet, measuring nearly everything and every way people interact with web pages brings with it powerful data. That data is likely used to improve the quality of search results by helping the stuff that appears authentic, editorial and high quality to rise up while the junk falls to the bottom (at least when the data+algorithms work properly).

For on-page optimization, this means we can't merely focus on keyword targeting. We need truly great content.

#4: Consolidation vs. Multi-Page Targeting

The question of whether to target two keyword terms/phrases on the same page or build individual pages for each seems to be a consistent struggle for SEOs. I field a question like this almost every week, and in 9/10 cases, the following flowchart would provide the right answer:

It's not complex - and that's the beauty. When targeting similar phrases or phrases that can work together and target the same intent for most users, a single page should suffice. When the phrases cannot logically work together in a title/headline or when the intents don't have a high likelihood for overlap, it's time to build different pages and target the keywords separately.

Feel free to use these in your presentations, websites and internal/client documents (though a source credit is much appreciated). And best of luck with your keyword targeting + on-page efforts!

I agree - Time and time again I see both: websites that should have multiple pages for each keyword, and websites who really should consolidate pages. The graphic serves as a nice supplement (and guideline) when attempting to explain the difference and the importance of each side.

very nice post (oh, and I welcome back Googlebot in the third graphic).

Your flow chart about how to decide if it's better to concentrate our content and keyword optimization over 1 or more pages is surely useful.

I think that the biggest problem people may find is how to focus the home page optimization. In fact, even if sometimes it can be very easy (i.e.: 4 Stars Hotel New York), some other not that much (i.e.: an eCommerce that sells different kind of products), and therefore we see two different option used:

But I think that when we have the problem with a generic eCommerce it's the time to use again the 80/20 rule: if the 20 % of our products gives us the 80 % of our sales (and benefits, of course), we must base the choose of our keywords on this 20 % in order to delimit the keywords range.

For me, the most valuable take is form the very last paragraph, "Feel free to use these in your presentations, websites and internal/client documents". ~ Thank you very much indeed.

This will be most helpful when explaining to (in-house) clients the topics covered within your post, especially No. 2 'More Accurate View of On-Page SEO' and No. 4 'Consolidation vs Multi-Page Targeting', which are not easy to explain purely in words, your diagrams & graphics will help for sure.

The rest will be helpful in educating others within the team such as copywriters and designers.

I just want to print these out, frame them and send them off to a few of my former clients! Sometimes site owners just don't seem to "get it," no matter how many times I explain it. A picture is worth a thousand words, right? Great graphs to get across important points.

I love #4 - this is something that most on-site SEOs should spend more time on, though I think a bit of experimentation is needed. (Hello Analytics!) If in doubt, I'd always consolidate rather than split into multi-pages. If a page content starts getting too long, or the too complex to find the information you need then it's easier to split into multi-pages rather than the other way round (301s) and I'd also add - always keep refining as you go along.

Thanks for this... I think the best graphic for *me* is the top one. We try hard to write good content at our blog (www.modifywatches.com/blog). But I'm always caught thinking about optimization. And, um, that's a fallacy because I'm really new at this. So your point (80-20) is really helpful. In some senses it gives me permission to focus on content with just a few tweaks.

In essence, Google just wants websites to provide users with the best content possible. So theoretically, if you do just that and focus on user experience while worrying little about ranking well, traffic should come naturally... right?

Although we mustn't get out of sight the importance of keywords in every SEO strategy (still the core of it), our final goal is to seduce customers (so people).

You dive into the topic when you say:

I'm not suggesting one shouldn't optimize for keywords or that using terms and phrases that stay relevant and on-topic won't help. I'm merely noting that optimizing for the experience real, human users have and the value they derive from your work can produce outsized returns to simple, classic on-page optimization.

For me, that's the key. Probably, SEOs have focused too much on optimizing a webpage rather than making it as human-friendly as possible. I use to stress the need to lead all our efforts into humanizing websites.

RandFish This is quite rite makes me easy to explain to my Bosses abou the stuff as you know its hard to make them understand what we are talking about ........ althoug I am still trying to find a way to improve a website specially for UK only is there any advice for me. Looking forward to it ...... !!! Thanks.

As usual Rand you have laid this out in a way that will be easily understood by anyone updating their web content. This is so important, and I think many people miss this. When I am doing training for clients on WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, etc. I spend a good deal of time explaining how they can use these tools for on page SEO and even more time explaining how they can ruin their on page SEO with these same tools. I will recommend this post to all of my clients!

Yea multi-page vs. single page targeting is always a tough question. I've seen success with targeting one page with multiple keywords after the page starts ranking for the primary keyword. So one good way to do it is try to rank a page for a keyword and get that ranking, then add on additional keyword(s). Obviously there are flaws to this method since you'd have to wait awhile to start ranking for the primary keyword, but it's a good method to make sure you nail the focus keyword without getting distracted. Just a thought. Great post.

Excellent points. The back to basic comment is particularly applicable. After thinking about how I applied some of my content to my site I realized that Google probably could not even read it (sitll debate on issues such as Iframes, PDF embeds etc.

The page consolidation breakdown is a good one. There have been several times when trying to determine if another page is needed or not is necessary. I found by categorizing yor keywords and what the page is about is a great way to determine if another page is necessary or not. like deciding if it is a broad topic or requires more in depth. So, if it is a main top and has multiple sub-categories or if it only has a few categories. This would also follow along with how many keywords should be used per page when performing on-page optimization. I would like to remind anyone that if you create another page to capture another set of keywords your increasing your work load as well. The increased work load requires more time to optimze. :) Good infographic thanks for sharing.

I want to pass a few of these graphics around to the various business units here. #2 has to be one of my all time favorites and if you don't mind me stealing it I am going to use it in my next in house training presentation.

Thanks Rand, everytime I see posts like these it makes me feel better about my Pro Membership. I know this one was free but you earn every dime I send you.

thanks. I have ranked websits with very little keywords on page. IMO its not about what y ou say you are, its about what google thinks you are. And that comes with a lot of offsite work. Not only links and anchor texts but also relevancy, citations, etc.

This is a very good refresher rand! Now I need to look back about my On page skills again. Thanks for helping out. However, I am interested in knowing how the <p> affects SEO? or how using <p> can help in ranking. (does it make sense?) I heard that a lot of people are using <p> today.. Please help me clear the clouds in my head. thanks

I see the value of viewing things from a different perspective but I believe that this post is not a really good guide as it doesn't have a very clear flow of the information. I would probably go from 3 to 4 to 2 to 1.

On page SEO most definately isn't just about keywords. the Google bot as you say is smart and analyses just about everything, so linking out to other related sites is also highly important. The search engines love it when we share content and interact with others.

This is what I've been searching for... I am new with this SEO thing. I was thinking that beside the scientific paper about PageRank, there maybe something else that Google do. My guess was Google is using Google Analytics data to rank Pages on the internet. But then I watched video from Matt Cutts confirming that Google never use Google Analytics data. One thing that I didn't realize that Google can use Google Toolbar, Chrome, Androids, etc to do that. Now everything makes sense. Thanks for the explanation. I've just registered SEOMoz, gave one thumb up for you. I am using Chrome by the way.

Your diagram outling consolidation versus going multi page is dead on. Over the last seveal months I have developed similar decision points and after some trial and error have experienced real success expanding the number of pages.

My question is "Where was this post last spring?" lol It would have saved me me a lot of time and effort. At least now I will have this in hand when it comes time to make more decisions of a similar nature.

My favorite is the unfocused article that is sent my way, how many times I've had to reorganize content because the client has covered 5 different topics within one article. Good expanation on organizing keywords and content!

Hmm this is very interesting, especially the figure about combining pages for keywords. We currently have three seperate pages for the keywords Gold Coast, Gold Coast Airport, Coolangatta. And they're all for the same branch.

Think I might combine two of the pages. "Gold Coast" and "Gold Coast Airport at Coolangatta"

Appreciate the illustrations. I strongly agree with you that on page keyword repetition is becoming almost useless as alogorithms get better and parsing on page content.

I always look at having a sound page site structure HTML wise in the document outline with strong page title, description and H1 tag. Develop the content for the users based on managing their expectations.

If the CTR is high, the bounce rate low, and the content is relevant; the people will know. Social indicators dictate quality of content.

There is no way you can be everything to everyone but you need to try your best to optimize your strategy for your audience.

I would assume consolidation would be a better bet if you can. I am thinking in terms of what I would want to see or how I would want to navigate a web page. If there is a chance that I have to do less clicks to get to the information that I need the better right?

Straight forward and common sense. (you would think many SEO specialist would have) Never fails.. when I get a client that has already had seo done by someone else...There's keyword stuffing in the footer, font blended in with the background and so on. My gain their loss. I'm new to seomoz, I really like the full detail explanations. Very well planned out. The only task I am having trouble with is back linking. If anyone knows which direction to point me feel free.

I would start with blog commenting. Find good, strong blogs related to your niche and spend some time to establish yourself as an authority. Don't throw a link in every comment, be concise. Research the topic and write useful comments. Start with 3-4 blogs and a few forums. Although press releases and article publishing is not what they used to be, IMO, you should use them sparely for link diversification. Time/money permitting, you should look into writing great content for your website as well. Write for people not for serach engines. Put some of those articles on sites like Quora or Reddit and if the are really good people will link back to you.

I was doing some mental gymnastics this week trying to pick my battle on which keywords to target this month for additional landing pages. Do I pick those with higher search volume? Or those that are less competitive? Or those that share similar topics etc...? Thanks Rand! My mind feels alittle more at ease. Now I have a better direction. Great post!

Wow, thanks! I bookmarked this post and will direct people to read it. I am on a lookout for good content writers, and I often get proposals with keyword overstaffed articles as exemplary work. Unbelievable that some people still think it is a good practice.

Great post! People sometimes forget all the data that google is collecting about websites. How google measures successful searches, time spent on the site, and pageviews are all very important ranking factors that I think people overlook.

I think that if the keyword stuffer would be putting greater effort into user experience, contrast an typography they would get better rankings over all.

For some time back I started to change my SEO strategies with great succsess, before even thinging about text and technical improvements I looked over improvements to userexperiense, typography and contrast. After making improvements there I did my on-page and techical.

Thank you for the great post, i have tried to explain this to clients, fellow co-workers, friends, etc and they never quite get the difference in my explination. These three images above truly simplify the approach and are great resource!

Truly too good Rand... It couldn't be better without illustrations and they were just talking the value. I am still doubtful about the oerfect repetition. I normally keep the keyphrases once (sensibly) in each paragraph and try to target related (multiple) keywords in the copy (3-5 times in 500 words). If we take an example of say 1000 words and 1 keyword, what would you call perfect repetition and what's overdoing?

Nice work, Rand. Sometimes, a picture really helps to drive home (and simplify) a concept. I really dig the 4th illustration regarding the similar keyword strategy.

As search engines continue to advance in how they parse content (through topic modeling/LDA, etc.) - I think it only makes sense to consolidate keywords with similar intent into a singular web document.

The On Page seo of the year 2002 was different than that of today.. there are many infographics to explain this but I always find the Moz's Infographics and diagrams much easy to understand the difference!

Many times I find myself to get confused regarding targeting the pages for similar keywords and I get confused should I target all keywords with just a single page or not! But with the help of flowchart ..i find it easy to think and execute My On Page optimization!

I agree! Almost every propective client who have done a bit of research (and think they know everything about SEO) come in thinking keyword optimization is the holy grail of SEO and insist it should be a big part of their strategy. I would be nice to show them these infographics.